1636.J THE GREAT SEPULCHRE. 75 



games were in progress, the young men and women 

 practising archery and other exercises, for prizes 

 offered by the mourners in the name of their dead 

 relatives.^ Some of the chiefs conducted Brebeuf 

 and his companions to the place prepared for the 

 ceremony. It was a cleared area in the forest, 

 many acres in extent. In the midst was a pit, 

 about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide. Around 

 it was reared a high and strong scaffolding ; and 

 on this were planted numerous upright poles, with 

 cross-poles extended between, for hanging the fu- 

 neral gifts and the remains of the dead. 



Meanwhile there was a long delay. The Jesuits 

 were lodged in a house where more than a hundred 

 of these bundles of mortality were hanging from the 

 rafters. Some were mere shapeless rolls ; others 

 were made up into clumsy effigies, adorned with 

 feathers, beads, and belts of dyed porcupine-quills. 

 Amidst this throng of the living and the dead, the 

 priests spent a night which the imagination and 

 the senses conspired to render almost insupport- 

 able. 



At length the officiatmg chiefs gave the word to 

 prepare for the ceremony. The relics were taken 

 down, opened for the last time, and the bones ca- 

 ressed and fondled by the women amid paroxysms 

 of lamentation.^ Then all the processions were 



1 Funeral games were not confined to the Hurons and Iroquois : Fer- 

 ret mentions having seen them among the Ottawas. An illustrated 

 description of them will be found in Lafitau. 



2 " I'admiray la tendresse d'vne femme enuers son pere et ses enfans ; 

 elle est fille dVn Capitaine, qui est mort fort age, et a este autrefois fort 

 considerable dans le Pais: elle luj peignoit sa cheuelure, elle manioit 



